Abstract : It is virtually unarguable that the past decade has wrought a relative decline in the military power of the United States in comparison to that of the Soviet Union. Analyses devoted to comparisons of such power invariably focus on military hardware and force sizings. Most informed observers would agree that the resultant military power gap will continue, if not widen, in the next decade. Despite current efforts to modernize American military capabilities, domestic considerations rule out a significant narrowing, much less closure of this putative gap. Given this reality, certain imperative are at once manifest to the national security policy makers. Continued reliance on deterrence via mutual assured destruction perpetuates the grievous error of confusing strategic ways with strategic ends. Nuclear war-avoidance is a critically important way we achieve our national end of survival as a free nation; it is not an end in itself. This has urgent implications for US national strategy. After a review of unclassified literature, the author offers an American public perception paradigm that depicts war as a failure of policy; suggests that general war was described by Clausewitz in his abstract concept of pure war; compares and contrasts selected strategic policies of the US and the USSR; and finally, proposes a Presidential initiative to move the United States toward a national strategy for the common defense of peace with freedom. (Author)